Faces and Places

If you’ve lost a gold ring or any other valuable metal object, an area metal detecting and relic club may be able to help you.

Donnie Catoe, president of the Sandhill Metal Detecting and Relic Club in Pageland, said members of the club not only hunt for precious metals and artifacts as a hobby, but also help people in the community find lost objects, whether it be an old high school graduation ring or a precious jewel.

Ollie Alexander has a soothing, calming presence. She seems full of wisdom and humility. She draws you to her, like a warm fire on a winter’s night.

Alexander, 68, moves gracefully and quietly through a room. She appears much younger than her age. She commands the language and expresses herself with ease and graceful gestures. She believes she has a God-given purpose and wants to help others discover theirs.

For the past seven years, farming has been a passion for Rachel Hovis. Her work and dedication to farming led her to receive the 2016 American FFA Degree, along with 18 others in the state.
“It’s the highest honor an FFA member can get,” Hovis said.
The Future Farmers of America Degree is awarded to students based on their leadership abilities, their participation in at least 50 hours of community service with three different organizations, their supervised agricultural experience and their time and cost investments.

As summer fades into fall, it’s time to help lawns recover from summer stress and prepare for the winter ahead.

Keep mowing your lawn as long as it continues to grow. Grow cool-season grasses like bluegrass, fescue and ryegrass, and you want it 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches tall. Warm-season grasses like Bermuda, carpetgrass, centipede and zoysia should be grown at 1 to 2 inches tall while St. Augustine should a bit higher, 2 to 3 inches, for best results.

Catawba Nation potter Keith Brown is coming to the University of South Carolina Lancaster’s Native American Studies Center for four-month artist-in-residence program sponsored by the S.C. Arts Commission.

Brown will be at the center in downtown Lancaster from Aug. 25 through Dec. 17, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and every other Saturday.

Brown will provide visitors with demonstrations, share how Catawba pottery is made and explain the history of the tradition.

We all have heard of blueprints or patterns. They’re basically maps that we follow to physically build something, like a house or a piece of clothing.
The kinds of blueprints I’ll talk about today give us directions to constructing better thoughts, actions and emotions.
I’ll give you three specific things you can do to help take your health blueprint to a higher level.

The Southside Adult Family Literacy Project wrapped up its third-annual youth summer camp with the theme Shining Minds.
The camp, which had 31 participants throughout the month and ended on July 28, was created to help at-risk youth retain information that they learned in the previous school year.
Participants worked on interactive-learning activities in the Literacy Project’s Preston Blackmon Center computer lab on Sowell Street in Lancaster.